Our Helsinki Discoveries: Where To Stay & Eat Plus Great Activities With Kids!

Discovering Finland!

​Sneak Peak

Where to stay? Töölö
Where to eat?  Levain Bakery & Eatery, Friends & Brgrs
Top Five Things To Do With Kids?

1. Seurasaari Island and Open Air Museum
2. Sibelius Finland Live Music Experience at Helsinki National Hall
3. Helsinki Zoo on Korkeasaari Island
4. National Museum of Finland (featuring "Barbie - The Icon" exhibition)
5. Linnanmäki Amusement Park and Sea Life aquarium​ ​

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I know it sounds crazy for a Type A person but when I travel I really don't like having a concrete plan or itinerary. I've always preferred spontaneous, open-ended fun. I like having the freedom to change my mind, or add something unexpectedly amazing at the last minute.

This explains why, when my nine year old daughter Angel and I arrived in glorious Finland last week, I had no idea how we would spend the four days and nights of our stay.

That, crazily enough, was an essential part of the travel magic.

I did try to find a decent guidebook before we arrived in the country. 

Okay... I didn't try that hard.  My daughter and I stopped at a total of one American bookstore called Barnes & Noble in the Irvine Spectrum Center Mall on our way to the Los Angeles International Airport.  As it turned out, they had a single book about Scandinavia that devoted 30 pages to Finland... only 5 of which covered Helsinki.  

That book cost about $25USD. It was pretty heavy.  I calculated that we'd be spending about $5 per page of Helsinki info. On the bright side, it was written in English (our native language).

"I think we can do better in Spain."  I ditched the book and rushed nine year old Angel out of the store and onward to the airport. 
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Great experience with Norwegian Air Shuttle!

After our long journey home to Barcelona I had two days in town to rest, do laundry, re-pack and find a guidebook before we jumped on our Norwegian flight to Helsinki.  

In the end I found a pocket sized book in Spanish explaining Helsinki's history. I mainly purchased it to use the foldable city map attached to the back of the book.

​​Angel and I arrived in Finland after a four hour flight on Norwegian Air Shuttle.  It was uneventful - good service, a little turbulence toward the end.
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We had only the basics covered: roundtrip airplane tickets, a well-reviewed AirBNB apartment rented in a good Helsinki neighborhood, and some euro in cash.

​From there, we were free to explore, discover and invent every moment of each day.

What a luxury!  Freedom from schedules! Freedom from 'musts'.

"Where would YOU like to go?" I asked Angel. "What would YOU like to do?"

Angel is the youngest child of three. She RARELY gets to be the one choosing or deciding anything. The poor thing spends half her life getting dragged to her brother's soccer practices, games, playdates, etc.

Her face lit up like Christmas morning. "Really? I get to choose?"

"Sure!  Definitely. Let's find out our options and then you pick the things you most want to do, and we will do them."

"You too, Mommy." She fixed a serious look on my face.  "You also get to choose the things you want to do.  This is your trip too."

Fun for Angel to choose her own adventure!

​Luckily it's not that hard in this day and age to find out what's available in a large cosmopolitan city like Helsinki.  Between TripAdvisor and the various brochures at our AirBNB, she and I soon had a huge list of options.  Using that as a jumping off point, we dove into our adventure and did not overthink it.

Here are the highlights of what Angel and I discovered for ourselves during our four days in Helsinki! Our suggestions are ideal for families with kids, but would also be useful and fun for travelers alone or couples on vacation.
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Finland is beautiful!

​The Nitty Gritty

Where to stay?  
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Töölö  

The ​Töölö neighborhood in Helsinki.

Töölö is a very old and safe neighborhood just a few blocks away from the Helsinki Art Museum (HAM) and the Natural Science Museum.  There is a truly unique, very famous church excavated into a rock called Temppelinaukion kirkko and the enormous, impressive Finnish Parliament buildings!  Angel and I found two or three parks for kids within close range (Angel tried them all out!) and it was a quick and easy stroll to the well known Kampii shopping center and the Kamppi metro station. We both loved staying here and even discovered two great restaurants and a famous jazz club nearby!

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Where to eat? 
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Levain Bakery & Eatery
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Ridiculously delicious food at the Levain Bakery & Eatery.

Located just a few blocks from the AirBNB flat where we stayed, we stumbled upon this treasure on our first day.  Levain is a casual, comfortable place where people can meet for breakfast, lunch or dinner.  (Dinner service begins at 3pm/15:00 and lasts until late at night!) There is indoor and outdoor seating. The jewel of this restaurant is their bakery which creates gorgeous real sourdough bread and other homemade products from morning through afternoon so that guests can enjoy fresh bread with their dinners! 

Although I am gluten free, my daughter tried the bread and reported back that it was beyond delicious!  Together we enjoyed a meal of sage roasted chicken with a saffron aioli sauce, decadent handcut fries and salad along with a Finnish version of Manchego cheese and marinated olives for an appetizer.  Yum! ​


Friends & Brgrs

So reasonably priced and fantastic, we went back!

Friends & Brgrs  is a sensational burger chain unlike anything I've had before.  I don't really eat red meat (once in a blue moon) and yet we liked this place so much we ate here three days in a row with my daughter - it was that good!  They have beef, chicken and vegan burgers made fresh to order along with fries and milkshakes.

Part of what sets this small, privately run chain apart of restaurants is the way they create their food. They bake all of their own buns on-site, grind the meat fresh in the restaurant every day, and triple cook their fries, using high quality locally sourced ingredients.  Friends & Brgrs has gluten free and vegan options, and also some fun and unusual flavors like fries with cheddar, pico de gallo and special house mayonnaise.

As a mom I really appreciated their environmentally friendly tableware.  All meals are served on real plates and drinks given in real glasses.  Waste is immediately recycled into different bins, and leftovers are given in simple brown paper bags.  Amazing for a fast food joint!
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​Top Five Things To Do With Kids?

Seurrasaari Island and Open Air Museum
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The Open Air Museum is full of spectacular, original 19th century buildings.

Wow! This island is seriously cool. Located just a few km from downtown Helsinki, this beautiful green escape can be reached easily by the #24 bus or private car and is well worth the effort!  Its Open Air museum features 87 different buildings built mainly in the 19th century and taken from all around Finland to represent all of its different territories. Domesticated animals live in wooden pens (sheep, goats) and wild ones scamper around the island (red squirrels, hares). 

You can pay to go inside of the buildings during museum hours, or walk around the grounds for free, even if you are there during off hours (which we were).  There are churches, farms, windmills, boat houses, etc. and during business hours all of them are attended by knowledgable guides who can explain the history of each individual location.  The museum cost was reasonable... 9 euro for adults and 3 euro for children 7-17. Kids under 7 are free.

To me, this felt (in a good way) like visiting colonial Williamsburg in Virginia (USA). It's been compared by other travelers to the Museum of Appalachia in the Southern United States.
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Sibelius Finland Live Music Experience at Helsinki National Hall
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Angel with the dynamic producer of the Sibelius Finland Live Music Experience.

The Sibelius Finland Live Music Experience was 3x better than I'd hoped it would be. I purchased tickets at the last minute and after reading reviews online, I imagined that it would be small and homespun. In actuality this is a very impressive one hour performance by talented young musicians in a beautiful hall.  

The concert (showcasing highlights from Sibelius' famous works) is narrated very enjoyably by the event's producer (pictured here with Angel) alongside a curated visual display. Each guest is given a special CD and booklet made for the event.  Audience members are invited to share a non-alcoholic Finnish beverage and chat with the musicians after the show.

My daughter and I loved it!  Angel particularly enjoyed listening to "Valse Triste" and "Finlandia".  This was a perfect, concise introduction for her to the music of Sibelius... full of pictures and funny stories. Highly recommended.

​Helsinki Zoo on Korkeasaari Island
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Reindeer!

The best thing about this zoo is its setting. It's one of the only zoos in the entire world located on its own island!  To get there you have to walk across a long wooden bridge that attaches it to the mainland. (You could also row over on a boat, in theory!) Korkeasaari has no exterior walls or fences at its edges - just small beaches and open water around the zoo and its pen enclosures.  

Thanks to the little summer rainstorm that happened as we arrived, many of the animals were hiding in their shelters and not visible as we walked by.  Apparently there are 150 species though!  It was fun to see some animals we'd only heard about in books before, like the European bison. Angel was beyond delighted by the large exhibit of reindeer.  She named them and analyzed how it is that reindeer are reportedly able to fly at Christmas.  ("Santa's reindeer are magical," she explained to me, "so their antlers aren't too heavy to fly. That's probably how they do it.")


​National Museum of Finland (featuring "Barbie - The Icon" exhibition)
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National Museum of Finland, currently featuring "Barbie - The Icon."

Angel has never been much of a Barbie girl, although she's fine with playing with Barbies if that is what her friends want to do.  It would never have occurred to her, or to me, to visit a Barbie exhibition.  

Yet, when we learned that the National Museum of Finland was featuring a world famous exhibition celebrating Barbie, we decided that it might be fun to check the 450 dolls they have on display!  We had a great time! Barbie is more of an 'icon' than I ever knew... renowned for being a fashion model, career woman, social pioneer, diva and woman of the world for nearly 60 years. Fun fact: Barbie's 'real' name is Barbara Millicent Roberts!

The permanent collection of the National Museum of Finland was less pink, fluffy and fun but very impressive!  With Finnish artifacts from the Stone Age all the way to present day, this collection taught us so much about Finland's history!  We enjoyed the coins, jewelry, weapons, clothing, decorations and paintings on display and Angel had a fantastic time on the third floor level where the 'kids room' featured weaving on a loom, making buildings out of tall logs and driving an old-fashioned horse and buggy.

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​Linnanmäki Amusement Park and Sea Life aquarium

Lots to see and do at Linnanmäki and the Sea Life Center!

Linnanmäki is a sweet place to visit with kids.  This popular amusement park has been around since 1950, so it has an older feel. Owned by the nonprofit Children's Day Foundation (Lasten Päivän Säätiö), the purpose of the park is to raise money to donate to Finnish child welfare associations. It kind of makes you want to buy an extra ice cream, when you know your money is going to such a good cause.

In addition to more than 40 rides (like teacups!) and rollercoasters (like its iconic wooden rollercoaster built in 1951), Linnanmäki features a carousel dating back to 1896, a theater, a ferris wheel, a river rapids ride, arcades, restaurants, ice cream, and an aquarium/ocean conservation center.

Angel was really excited to visit this Sea Life Center, which is part of a pan-European aquarium chain.  We originally hiked to Linnanmäki because she wanted to go to the aquarium, and only realized once we'd arrived how many other activities there were to do!  

Sea Life Helsinki has a decent collection of fish, crustaceans, jellyfish, seahorses and sharks from bodies of water all over the world (tropical to arctic). The center is geared toward education about ocean pollution and species conservation. Angel especially enjoyed walking through a large plexiglass tube where she was right in the middle of the swimming creatures!

Finally...

If you've wondered whether it's worth visiting Helsinki with your kids, I encourage you to do it. My daughter is only nine but we had a fantastic trip and now she and I both look forward to bringing the rest of our family to Finland with us someday.

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​​Life is short.  Get out there and choose your own adventure! :)
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Adiós, Helsinki! Until next time!

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